Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Apologising for Amritsar

There are about 50 million lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transexuals in the UK. That is why every Government policy is now tested for any potential detriment to this cohesive community; why the social bedrock of the nation is being redefined to accord with their pleas for equality; and why they must be represented in the Cabinet, in the General Synod and on every soap opera.

It is also why HM Government apologised to Alan Turing in 2009, almost 60 years after he was outrageously prosecuted for gross indecency after admitting a sexual relationship with a man. Gordon Brown said that Turing - a genius mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist - suffered 'appalling' treatment simply for being gay. This included chemical castration, which almost certainly contributed to his suicide. Appalling indeed. Government apology wholly justified.

There are only about 500,000 Sikhs in the UK. That is why no Government policy is tested for any potential detriment to this community, and when it is, they invariably play second-fiddle to the Muslims, who tend to shout a bit louder. David Cameron once promised them their own distinct ethnicity, but he reneged on that pledge. There are no Sikhs in the Cabinet, none in the General Synod, and (to His Grace's sparse knowledge), none in any soap opera.

It is laudable for the Prime Minister to visit Amritsar and pay his respects in memory of the hundreds (or thousands) of Sikhs who were slaughtered there by the British Army in a six- (or 20-) minute massacre in 1919. Whether it was panic or malice on the part of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, we cannot know. What we do know is that these protestors were all unarmed and their aspiration was for a peaceful transition to national independence. If they had been protesting today in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt or Syria, we would be siding with the 'rebels'; even sending in British troops to assist their political objectives.

So, why no official Government apology to the Sikhs of Amritsar? It has been almost a century: surely the perspective of history has established beyond doubt that those who gathered in protest around the Golden Temple were treated at least as outrageously as Alan Turing? Their deaths were a moral outrage; the crime remains a deep scar on the soul of Empire.

His Grace is no fan of vicarious apology, but HM Government not infrequently expresses deep remorse for the sins of its fathers - either when it is the right thing to do, or (more likely) when it is deemed to be of tactical electoral advantage to the sons. Why is winning the votes of the LGBT community of greater significance than those of British Sikhs?

78 Comments:

And why, given Mr Cameron is in India, is he not putting pressure on the Indian government to enforce laws against dowry-related crime and violence towards women? Why is he not railing against a country which has a severe gender imbalance, a country in which the three words "It's a girl" is a death sentence, either in utero or via infanticide or child neglect.

Why is the DFID still funding this country and why are we going as supplicant to a country which does not respect 50% of its population?

The Government were correct to express regret for Turing but not apologise. He was convicted according to the law at the time and he himself opted for chemical castration - an appalling procedure still offered to some sex offenders today. There must be no retrospective 'clemency' though some are vociferously campaigning for this. Why? To make him an icon; a heroic martyr for the cause.

So to Dyer and Amritsar. The then Archbishop of Canterbury called him ""a brave and patriotic soldier". Rudyard Kipling described him as "the man who saved India". Churchill called it a "monstrous event". A court of inquiry ruled against Dyer. One doesn't fire, without warning, into an unarmed crowd of protestors. Even by the standards of the time it was an indefensible act. Today, he might find himself up before the Hague for crimes against humanity.

I am not one for politicians' apologies for things that they have not done. But, ever the Heir to Blair, David Cameron is. Why, then, no apology at Amritsar?

Perhaps he has been informed by that Olympic standard social climber and name-dropper, pseudo-aristocratic Kentucky Fried Chicken heir, and stalwart both of the Henry Jackson Society and of the pro-apartheid Springbok Club, Andrew Roberts.

Roberts's books are much admired by the noted polymath, George W Bush. They contain repeated misspellings of the same place names. They assume that historical figures with the same name were the same person. They repeatedly refer to the Red Army marching eastwards across Europe.

And they not only defend the Amritsar Massacre (as well as the pioneering concentration camps during the Boer War, which I doubt that he mentions to his Vorsterite restorationist associates), but even suggest that Amritsar itself is in the south of India.

Your Grace,I don't believe in apologies from the past, neither should Alan Turing be feted as he is as recent evidence show that two Post Office engineers were the real inventers of the first electronic computer but were sworn to silence even till very recently, so nobody knew about them.

Cameron is reported to have said at Amritsar, "We must ensure that the United Kingdom stands up for the right of peaceful protest around the world".I trust he will remember that when the righteous rise up against the immoral rulers of the day.

Secondly, and most importantly; the current Political Class have no use for Sikhs as they cannot be used to destroy the old British institutions such as the church and monarchy like the LGBT "community" can.

I don't know what you wrote, but it takes an awful lot to get pulled on this forum (it isn't the Guardian, no Liberals here worrying about causing offence) so I'm guessing whatever it was was an outright libel against an identifiably individual. As a Liberal, you probably think you're entitled; unfortunately, they haven't actually got around to changing the law yet, so you'll have to wait a while before you come into your kingdom.

I think Your Grace has conceded that the apology to Turing isn't your real beef - it's the passing of Equal Marriage into law. As such, I shall address the latter in my comment. I assume Turing was only referenced because the government "apologised" to Turing.

I think it's a shame the PM didn't take this opportunity to underline a change in Britain's stance on "people power", but I don't really see what this has to do with gay marriage, except through the electoral impact implied in your final paragraph.

My suggestion is that that the LGBT community is perhaps more evenly spread, and draws fairly proportionately from all our diverse communities, perhaps the PM's political advisers realised that more people are directly and indirectly affected by equal marriage now, than something that happened a while ago?

Even the most pig headed MP, given the number of staffers in parliament who are gay and lesbian, will also be aware that many friends and relatives of LGBT people will be sympathetic to their desire to get married. This number multiplies the electoral impact of gay marriage for the tories.

In marketing speak, equal marriage is therefore a sort of "halo brand" for the Tories which allows the rest of their policies to be seen in a more positive light by the portion of the populace who didn't have entrenched views on the subject.

The converse can also be said for the CoE and RCC whose own halos are barely noticeable at all over the bright blushing shame at their confusion over the role of women, and their treatment of vulnerable children in their care, respectively.

Why does the PM prioritise LGBTQI views as more important than the views of other numerically superior socially conservative voters?

It is possible that he is looking to win the 2020 GE rather than the 2015 GE.

The CP has acquired a brand label as the NP in a socially liberal generation which is expanding by numbers over time.

He therefore understands that in order to attract the votes of the socially liberal generation he must jettison the socially conservative wing of the CP and its potential supporters: his chosen vehicle being SSM.

As Corvino and Gallagher put it chillingly in their book ‘Debating Same-Sex Marriage’:

Gallagher argues that the introduction of SSM will marginalise as bigots, through law and culture, defenders of Trad. Marriage; and Corvino agrees that that will be so: ‘Whichever side prevails in this debate, the other’s views will be marginalized. There’s no getting around that.’

In other words, holding socially conservative beliefs will be confined to the home. They will not be permitted to be expressed in public spaces such as the town hall, the class room, the health centre, the church hall: the public square.

In 1972 the American cross-cultural psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg advanced the thesis that, in the absence of a well thought out moral world-view, law acts as a moral-reference point.

The PM intends to accelerate the emerging dominance of the socially liberal world-view and by 2020 position the CP to harvest the votes from that world-view.

There is only one sociological problem with this stratagem: as people age they become experienced in life and lean towards social conservatism for the sake of security and stability.

Why Cameron's obsessions with gays and neglect of other groups like Sikhs (and Hindus)?

Remember the remark attributed to the Earl of Arran in the Sixties, when he was asked to explain why the House of Lords had legalised homosexuality but refused to impose a ban on badger-baiting: ‘Not many badgers in the House of Lords, old chap.’

What counted for the Lords then would seem to count for the modern Tory party and its friends in the media now.

Integrity - i don't see how these links diminish in any way the genius Turing displayed for crytoanalysis, or the influence that his work had on the statistical understanding of computing. Giants standing on the shoulders of giants in this case.

It seems you're trying to besmirch the name of a dead war hero because you don't like his personal life. How sad for you.

Nick - did it occur to you that the British government could treat its citizens fairly, as well as apologise for past treatment at the hands of empire?

Apologising for something that happened back in the past is a nonsense! as William Dalrymple rightly said, on radio 4 this morning, Blair apologising for the war on the Iraqis which he was in part responsible for makes sense but for Cameron to apologise for something that happened before either he or any living leader would be seen as a cynical ploy to get more trade for the UK and of no other value. Expressing regret and rejection of the ideals of sucgh actions can be acceptable but apologising ..what a waste of breath!

Besides which, despite what Kipling etc said, it was that massacre that put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that the British Empire was a benign empire and hastened the onset of Indian Independance

"Why is winning the votes of the LGBT community of greater significance than those of British Sikhs?" Because they are not as "cool" as the LGBT community. Call it hypocrisy if you like, but it is all to do with perceived political expediency and fashion.

The massacre at Amritsar was a worse injusticew than the injustice inflicted on Alan Turing, and was a far worse than gays not being able to call their civil partnership "marriage"

Politicians often have a strange set of valuesm which are unrelated to ordinary people. I've no doubt that as we transition liberal democracy to dystopic bum-ocracy we shall see more evidence of this

YG,I am sorry to see that you have swallowed whole the propaganda put out by Gandhi and his Indian Nationalist friends about Amritsar on 13 April 1919, just as did Edwin Montagu, the Liberal Secretary of State for India at the time, who based his knowledge of India on debates in the Cambridge Union and Tennis Parties with Pandit Nehru.

The official accounts accepted without question the casualty figures produced by Gandhi and his friends, none of which were or are supported by proper examination of the evidence.

As for complaints from modern Sikhs, they and the Prime Minister are clearly unaware that General Dyer was made an honorary Sikh by the Golden Temple authorities in 1919 for saving the Temple from desecration and Amritsar city from general pillage.

An accurate examination of the incident, with evidence from those who were there can be found in "The British Raj vol.ii Decay" by Elisabeth Beckett, available on Amazon.co.uk at £14.95.

It is a pity that the Prime Minister should apologise for an event dishonestly reported for political purposes and for which he was not responsible, while failing to apologise for the broken promises and changed policies for which he is most certainly responsible.

YG,I am sorry to see that you have swallowed whole the propaganda put out by Gandhi and his Indian Nationalist friends about Amritsar on 13 April 1919, just as did Edwin Montagu, the Liberal Secretary of State for India at the time, who based his knowledge of India on debates in the Cambridge Union and Tennis Parties with Pandit Nehru.

The official accounts accepted without question the casualty figures produced by Gandhi and his friends, none of which were or are supported by proper examination of the evidence.

As for complaints from modern Sikhs, they and the Prime Minister are clearly unaware that General Dyer was made an honorary Sikh by the Golden Temple authorities in 1919 for saving the Temple from desecration and Amritsar city from general pillage.

An accurate examination of the incident, with evidence from those who were there can be found in "The British Raj vol.ii Decay" by Elisabeth Beckett, available on Amazon.co.uk at £14.95.

It is a pity that the Prime Minister should apologise for an event dishonestly reported for political purposes and for which he was not responsible, while failing to apologise for the broken promises and changed policies for which he is most certainly responsible.

YG,I am sorry to see that you have swallowed whole the propaganda put out by Gandhi and his Indian Nationalist friends about Amritsar on 13 April 1919, just as did Edwin Montagu, the Liberal Secretary of State for India at the time, who based his knowledge of India on debates in the Cambridge Union and Tennis Parties with Pandit Nehru.

The official accounts accepted without question the casualty figures produced by Gandhi and his friends, none of which were or are supported by proper examination of the evidence.

As for complaints from modern Sikhs, they and the Prime Minister are clearly unaware that General Dyer was made an honorary Sikh by the Golden Temple authorities in 1919 for saving the Temple from desecration and Amritsar city from general pillage.

An accurate examination of the incident, with evidence from those who were there can be found in "The British Raj vol.ii Decay" by Elisabeth Beckett, available on Amazon.co.uk at £14.95.

It is a pity that the Prime Minister should apologise for an event dishonestly reported for political purposes and for which he was not responsible, while failing to apologise for the broken promises and changed policies for which he is most certainly responsible.

YG,I am sorry to see that you have swallowed whole the propaganda put out by Gandhi and his Indian Nationalist friends about Amritsar on 13 April 1919, just as did Edwin Montagu, the Liberal Secretary of State for India at the time, who based his knowledge of India on debates in the Cambridge Union and Tennis Parties with Pandit Nehru.

The official accounts accepted without question the casualty figures produced by Gandhi and his friends, none of which were or are supported by proper examination of the evidence.

As for complaints from modern Sikhs, they and the Prime Minister are clearly unaware that General Dyer was made an honorary Sikh by the Golden Temple authorities in 1919 for saving the Temple from desecration and Amritsar city from general pillage.

An accurate examination of the incident, with evidence from those who were there can be found in "The British Raj vol.ii Decay" by Elisabeth Beckett, available on Amazon.co.uk at £14.95.

It is a pity that the Prime Minister should apologise for an event dishonestly reported for political purposes and for which he was not responsible, while failing to apologise for the broken promises and changed policies for which he is most certainly responsible.

"did it occur to you that the British government could treat its citizens fairly" I think if the Government wanted to treat its citizens fairly it would have honoured its election manifesto and the coalition agreement, or at least hold a referendum on profound and contraversial issues like redefining marriage. This Government confuses fairness with populism. Politicians just drift with the latest trend wherever its takes us.

“Why is winning the votes of the LGBT community of greater significance than those of British Sikhs?”

Because in Call me Dave's book Sikhs don't count as they aren't controversial enough neither have they any use in changing the culture of this country to fall in line with the EU requirements on gayness.

Thank God for wisdom coming with age if call me Dave's strategy is to win 2020 by appealing to the young and foolish voters of the future now.

Has he done anything with the Indians to sort the helicopter order out? Instead of dressing up and talking clap trap apologetics for the past he should be noting their lifestyles and introducing new UK designed and manufactured solutions to their problems. He should be coming away with a full order book and some agreements that they treat their women better.

Also, it's just as well 50 million people in the UK attend CofE church at least once a month otherwise some people might wonder why on earth the CofE church still gets special privileges in our Legislature and so on.

To criticise those who are above criticism and we are not talking Sikhs here. Why, is your recently adopted son, and heir apparent, not a gay man himself ? (Not you Ivo, but one closer to his eminence who cannot be named.). The world should be made aware of this lest they accuse you of militant normality.

Anyway, here it is. The Inspector has warned before about submitting past events to today’s sensibilities. Even now, do we really appreciate what it was like there when Dyer did what he did. Why did Dyer not undergo court martial, why was he lauded at home ?

And have we ever received an apology from the Indians for the 1857 mutiny. That grew from just one town. Maybe Dyer had that in mind.

I say, I say, I say. Did you know the Claudius was the first Roman ruler for at least 14 who didn’t practice sodomy and pederasty. He stuck to women. He so amazed his court with this that they actually accused him of being a womaniser !

Now, today we have an increase in gay infections, and one reason apart from the condomly obvious, is that there has been an increase in gay curious sex experimenters amongst young men. That’s bi sexuality to the rest of us. Extremely worrying for a society that was rather hoping male gays would keep HIV in house, so to speak. Yet a rise in Bi numbers is always warmly applauded by LGBT, though as Pink News bears testament to, many LG have no time at all for B.

The Inspector is, rather like God, somewhat annoyed about this rise in unmanly bending activity, and has anecdotal proof that the almighty is doing something about it. In his infinite wisdom, He seems to be going down the SARS route. An infectious virus that is passed on only by close proximity because the thing dies quickly when exposed to the elements. It looks like it is going to be absolutely lethal to HIV types as it is strong enough to overwhelm the already reduced viral load potential that characterises sufferers. Not sure about gay weddings, but plenty of gay funerals coming up, what !

For chaps who don’t believe in God, substitute ‘Nature’ where appropriate. God, Nature – does it matter ? The results are the same…

I suppose STI rates must be a bit of a worry for Roman Catholics who don't follow their church's teaching on sexual morality. I feel quite virtuous myself because I've never had an STI and I don't sleep around so I'm highly unlikely to get one.

John Wrake said @15:45It is a pity that the Prime Minister should apologise for an event dishonestly reported for political purposes and for which he was not responsible, while failing to apologise for the broken promises and changed policies for which he is most certainly responsible.It's easier to apologise for someone else’s mistakes a long time ago so why draw attention one’s own mistakes, sorry change of plan.

Wouldn't apologizing for Amritsar be equivalent to apologizing for the existence of the British Empire? Alien rule is imposed and maintained by force. It is never benign. It can exist only so long as the ruling power has both the capability and the will to maintain its rule. It seems like you would be apologizing for something as if it were an abberation when in fact it was the essense of Empire. The British Army didn't travel around the world as a missionary organization. Is the Zulu Campaign (for example) really so different?

So when is somebody going to apologise to the British for:a) The Roman Empire;b) The Norman Invasion and Empire, especially the Harrying of the North;c) Imposing upon us the european Empire (and its capitalisation) -- without our permission d) All the havoc Camoron is wreaking -- partly as a result of each of the above.

Never mind pretending that Sikhs are any longer under British protection. --- I think we should demand our rights. Our feelings are hurt. We are offended.

__________

PS: Thank you Mr. Wrake. Dominus Vobiscum. I wondered when somebody would stand up against those 60 million voices --- and their Post-Colonialist Comrades!!!

"Pansexuality ... is the sexual attraction to people of all sexes or genders ... it includes people who are intersex and/or fall outside the gender binary. Go Ask Alice! states that pansexuals can be attracted to cismen, ciswomen (meaning cisgender), transmen, transwomen, intersex people, androgynous people, and everything else ..." (Wiki)

"To identify as cisgender is to identify as your birth gender, which is the opposite of someone identifying as transgender. It's where an individual's self-perception of their gender matches their sex.

There are a number of derivatives of the terms in use, including cis male for a male with a male gender identity, cis female for a female with a female gender identity, and cissexism. In addition, certain scholars have begun to use the term cisnormativity, akin to the queer studies' "heteronormativity."

Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook defined cisgender as a label for "individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity," complementing transgender."

Gulp, Dodo, although the Inspector never participated and never will, you can see why these lost corrupting souls were given a good kicking in those far off queer bashing days, which look set to return if Terence Higgins’ people go into schools to advocate, amongst another things, ‘rimming for all'...

What a hurricane our society has sown for the coming generation of young and innocent children. I recall sex education at school being spomewhat traumatic at age 12 years. Then it just entailed a man and a woman. One needs a degree level understanding nowadays just to keep up with all the new terms normalising all sorts of deviancy.

Of course. 'He who's name I must not mention' (praises be heaped upon him) and his ilk, advocate all this confusion in the name of 'diversity', 'equality' and 'self fulfillment'.

Mr Integrity said...I don't believe in apologies from the past, neither should Alan Turing be feted as he is as recent evidence show that two Post Office engineers were the real inventers of the first electronic computer but were sworn to silence even till very recently, so nobody knew about them.

Tommy Flowers played the major role in the creation of the Colossus code breaking machine and his role deserves to be much better known than it is. He has been overshadowed by Turing in recent years and I think that is because of the perceived need for a Gay hero.

However it would be a mistake to denigrate Turing in order to build up Flowers. The work of Bletchley Park was so important that there should be plenty of credit for everyone involved. There is more information about the respective roles of Turing and Flowers in the Wikipedia article about Flowers.

Look, I will tell you why the name of Mr. Turing should be consigned to ignominy. Because of him there is something calling a Turing Machine. And because there is something called a Turing Machine, people like me were assigned exercises to program the damn thing by sadistic instructors. Who cares whether traversing a chessboard with knight without repeating a square is NP Complete or not. Some things don't need to be investigated.

Turing served his country well, regardless of his homosexuality. This should be acknowledged. He was a flawed man, a troubled man, and in some respects a victim of the times in which he lived. He also carries a personal responsibility for his decisons and actions in those times. His behaviour was wrong on so many levels.

Soial movements need heros and history is rewritten to serve particular world and theological views. Promoting Turin as a martyr to advance the march of homosexuality should, in my opinion, be resisted. There will always be be competing 'saints' when there are differences of views. Cranmer and More are viewed differently by Catholics and Prostentants.

We live in a more tolerant age. A liberated age. An enlightened age. Things are changing rather rapidly. When toleration becomes acceptance of harmful deviations and then these become 'normalised', we are in trouble. And when the State then sides against the majority of it citizens - who remain silent - we are in deep, deep trouble. And when the Church reinforces rather than resists all this we are well and truly f*cked (excuse the expression but it seems apt).

As commented upon elsewhere, you have a rebellious streak. Instructions are there to be followed, not challenged by those not fully 'in the know'. People are placed in authority over you for a reason. (Now that's in the bible, I believe).

This applies not only to military exercises. The principle has wider applicability as presented in a little known 14th century document.

I did the exercises, but I didn't have to like it. Have you even see a Turing Machine? It's a math model of a computer. You program a math model of a computer and execute it on paper. Tedious doesn't do justice to it.

We all have to do things we don't want to. Do these tasks cheerfully and offer your suffering to God. Your instructors, far from being sadistic, were probably aware of your protesting nature and tried to counter this.

Carl Jacobs 18:37"Wouldn't apologizing for Amritsar be equivalent to apologizing for the existence of the British Empire?"Not really. The British Empire was built mostly on indirect rule,i.e. local princes were left to rule as in large parts of India.The British left the locals to get on with things. The British did impose laws on some things that they found abhorrent such as suttee and of course laws outlawing homosexuality(I have to put that in for the Inspectors sake).About a third of the Raj came from Ireland.Outside of India in other parts of what was the Empire many Indians still look to England as the mother country, in Malaysia for example.I know Sikhs here in Thailand whose families left India when it became independent.Strange how a nation of Empire builders have now become Little Englanders.

Roy: "He has been overshadowed by Turing in recent years and I think that is because of the perceived need for a Gay hero."

Turing has always been respected and famous in certain circles, and for nothing to do with his sexual orientation. I think it was Dawkins who helped promote him to wider fame more recently in the God Delusion by pointing out the social evil encouraged by religions at times.

I'm inclined to leave Turing's conviction well alone as he committed it in knowledge of the law of the time. Of course, we can still use it to point out the injustice of that law and the prevailing social attitudes, just like we can we (say) slavery, or attitudes about race in the 1950s.

Mr Singh @ 13.51 said, 'There is only one sociological problem with this stratagem: as people age they become experienced in life and lean towards social conservatism for the sake of security and stability.'

Precisely.

Dave may pretend it isn't so, but the largest electoral demographic in the UK would be the increasingly socially conservative Baby Boomer cohort, born 1945 to 1960 according to conventional wisdom.

By talking to pre-Baby Boomers such as Clarke and Maude and post-Baby Boomers such as his own contemporaries, Dave completely misses a critical fifteen years of experience and opinion contained within a large voting bloc both within the Parliament and within the electorate.

Indeed, the only time Dave talks to this demographic within the Parliament is after yet another humiliation orchestrated by the 1922 Committee.

Cameron is on a steady course for electoral humiliation at the hands of the Baby boomers in 2015.

‘Of course, we can still use it to point out the injustice of that law and the prevailing social attitudes, just like we can we (say) slavery, or attitudes about race in the 1950s.’

Robert Oscar Lopez, Truth, Metaphor, and Race in the Marriage Debate

‘As long as the focus is on gays, a wealth of metaphors, especially the notion that gay is the new black, can shield the gay activist from inevitable scrutiny about the effects of his demands on children.

‘By contrast, when speaking of the child’s interests, metaphorical reasoning is highly dangerous. To what can we compare a child who has been partly engineered—either through surrogacy or insemination, always for some kind of fee—and then placed under the power of same-sex parents who deemed their quest for validation more considerable than the possibility that the child might be less than happy missing a father or mother?

‘To what can we compare a child trafficked from a third world orphanage to America by a couple that knew that the child's birth culture frowns upon gay relationships? To what can we compare a child who’s been told either that “mother” is double and “father” is nil, or that “father” is double and “mother” is nil? To what do we compare a child who must know, forever, that his mother was treated like a leased oven or that his father was a stranger in a sperm clinic who masturbated into a glass jar for $750?’

"I'm inclined to leave Turing's conviction well alone as he committed it in knowledge of the law of the time. Of course, we can still use it to point out the injustice of that law and the prevailing social attitudes, just like we can we (say) slavery, or attitudes about race in the 1950s."

Or in the future about B and B owners being prosecuted for "inhospitality" to gays

I am still laughing about BeeLZeeBub's comment above. Next time I get a naff night's sleep at a hotel or the waiter is rude to me at an Italian restaurant perhaps I should nuke the place.

"Who are the new slavers?" Sequor. In fact, I also have met many young people who are aware of what is happening to their country, and to Western culture. Their concern gives me hope; I pray that the Church, and even 'secular' educators, will nurture the trend increasingly.

A very good article. Particularly since Sikhism is a religion whose principles and votaries appear (to my doubtless superficial knowledge) to be harmless and indeed admirable. Gay websites assert that are six million homosexual men and five million lesbians in the UK. They honestly do believe those statistics. According to the Census the true figure is only 2%, something like one million in total, less than the number of Methodists, who are rarely portrayed with any sympathy in soap operas.

Of course the reason our politicians are so obsessed with this minority is because the homosexuals use strident abuse, persistent propaganda, shrill complaint, and they play the victim card, constantly taking offence in a hypocritical way. And the politicians are too stupid to ignore them.

I suspect that the Sikhs don't have a lobby for the same reason the Scots Irish in America don't --they serve, work, raise families and shut up. To put it another way, they go where the work is and the wars are and don't make a federal case of it. I recall the film reenactment of Amritsar in the movie GHANDI -- perhaps the only one done so far. Of course this is typical of the left Tory or otherwise to read only the history that is convenient no matter how redacted or political purposes. A shame and a disgrace as one of our lesser presidents once said.

About His Grace:

Archbishop Cranmer takes as his inspiration the words of Sir Humphrey Appleby: ‘It’s interesting,’ he observes, ‘that nowadays politicians want to talk about moral issues, and bishops want to talk politics.’ It is the fusion of the two in public life, and the necessity for a wider understanding of their complex symbiosis, which leads His Grace to write on these very sensitive issues.

Cranmer's Law:

"It hath been found by experience that no matter how decent, intelligent or thoughtful the reasoning of a conservative may be, as an argument with a liberal is advanced, the probability of being accused of ‘bigotry’, ‘hatred’ or ‘intolerance’ approaches 1 (100%).”

Follow His Grace on

The cost of His Grace's conviction:

His Grace's bottom line:

Freedom of speech must be tolerated, and everyone living in the United Kingdom must accept that they may be insulted about their own beliefs, or indeed be offended, and that is something which they must simply endure, not least because some suffer fates far worse. Comments on articles are therefore unmoderated, but do not necessarily reflect the views of Cranmer. Comments that are off-topic, gratuitously offensive, libelous, or otherwise irritating, may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on any thread does not constitute their endorsement by Cranmer; it may simply be that he considers them to be intelligent and erudite contributions to religio-political discourse...or not.

The Anglican Communion has no peculiar thought, practice, creed or confession of its own. It has only the Catholic Faith of the ancient Catholic Church, as preserved in the Catholic Creeds and maintained in the Catholic and Apostolic constitution of Christ's Church from the beginning.Dr Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1945-1961

British Conservatism's greatest:

The epithet of 'great' can be applied only to those who were defining leaders who successfully articulated and embodied the Conservatism of their age. They combined in their personal styles, priorities and policies, as Edmund Burke would say, 'a disposition to preserve' with an 'ability to improve'.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, PC, FRS.(Prime Minister 1979-1990)

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC.(Prime Minister 1957-1963)

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.Sir Winston Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can).(Prime Minister 1940-1945, 1951-1955)

I am not struck so much by the diversity of testimony as by the many-sidedness of truth.Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC.(Prime Minister 1923-1924, 1924-1929, 1935-1937)

If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, KG, GCVO, PC.(Prime Minister 1885-1886, 1886-1892, 1895-1902)

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.Benjamin Disraeli KG, PC, FRS, Earl of Beaconsfield.(Prime Minister 1868, 1874-1880)

Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.Sir Robert Peel, Bt.(Prime Minister 1834-1835, 1841-1846)

I consider the right of election as a public trust, granted not for the benefit of the individual, but for the public good.Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.(Prime Minister 1812-1827)

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.The Rt Hon. William Pitt, the Younger.(Prime Minister 1783-1801, 1804-1806)